This is the last entry you can comment on for the second half of October.
Everyone knows that a justice system can make mistakes, but what can be done to minimise them? How have things changed with the advent of DNA testing? Is the possible innocence of those who are convicted a good argument against capital punishment? How should the government compensate those whom they incorrectly incarcerate (or execute)?
It is a really unfortunate thing what happened to Michael, as if it wasn’t enough that his wife died; he was even convicted of murdering her and sentenced to life in prison. Nevertheless, things like this happen from a day to day basis, people commit a crime and someone else is blamed for it; however this story is somehow different, the person who got blamed, Michael in this case was actually after 25 years proven to be innocent of the crime he was charged for. I cannot imagine how Michael felt after being convicted and then, after being released. He must have lost all faith in the judicial system.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with today’s judicial system is that it doesn’t matter whether you committed the crime or not, it’s about making the people think that you are innocent and sometimes innocent people get convicted for crimes they haven’t committed.
If something like this happens, what should the court do? Is it enough to compensate the individual with money, when he spent almost a fourth of his entire life behind bars? Sure, the money helps definitely, but what about the time, knowledge and experience he could have gained throughout the 25 years? The problem is that the court can’t grant you any of those; therefore a financial compensation is probably the best way to sort it out. If the case is that the government executed the wrong person; a person who wasn’t guilty of the charges he was alleged of being guilty of, well, that is a different story. The most correct thing to do by the government would be to compensate the deceased person’s family financially, but I don’t think the government would; at least not in most of cases… This is because the government doesn’t want or need a bad reputation for killing an innocent person, and therefore sometimes just ignores the evidence that proves the innocence.
Those are the limitations of today’s judicial system, but as technology advances (like in this case) the fairness of these courts is increasing dramatically. This is because more evidence can be extracted from the crime scene and therefore, more proof to back up your claim. Like in this case, the evolution in DNA testing proved the person innocent; this changed the rest of his life. DNA testing is a great method of finding out the villain; it is an accurate and reliable technique in crime investigation. In my opinion, in a couple of years, it becomes nearly impossible to falsely convict someone due to the exponential evolution in technology. These technologically advanced methods would back up the truth and ensure that justice would done on the person who is really guilty of committing the crime.
People steal, people kill, they always had, they always will. But it all comes down to one thing. People steal because they need money. Take a look at the current system in Slovakia. Average salary of 700 euro per month, highest prices, lowest living standards (within Europe), I can almost see the time when people will not be able to purchase a pack of Tik-Taks without signing up for some ridiculous mortgage coming…
ReplyDeleteThat is the motivation for all crime in the world. Money and egoism. Therefore crime can only be truly stopped by either:
Eliminating any form of money from the system (Communism tried and failed)
+ Eliminating any form of the in-built psychological effect that causes people to always want more than they have (Never even attempted…)
Or:
Complete annihilation of the human race (The process might be a tiny bit unpleasant)
Unless any of these two conditions will be met, there has to be a form of law enforcement and justice (including prisons and imprisonment). The question is, how can we truly and unmistakably determine who is guilty and who is not? Well, the answer is we can’t. Even though DNA testing is already in advanced stages of development, there is limited justice in today’s justice. As the article stated, “investigators kept evidence from the defense that would have helped acquit him at trial”. Why? How is something like this even possible? The answer is simple, so I am going to try to make you come to it from your own perspective by the following question. Would you try to assist in putting someone in jail, even though you know he was capable of killing a random stranger woman and that he has probably got 20 other friends like him out in the world that can’t wait to get their hands on the investigator that got their friend in jail? That is where the problem is hidden.
What I do not understand from the article, is how could they put someone in jail for killing his own wife, if their 3 years old son (witness) said that it was not him who killed his mother? Where is the logic in that? How can someone do that? Most importantly, how can someone capable of doing that be in a position where he can use that to put someone else in jail for thirty years? I do not think a system working like this should be called “the best system of justice in the world”.
Knowing that innocent people can get sentenced to prison raises the question of whether the Capital punishment is something appropriate for a system with such weaknesses. The answer is: definitely not. If there was a way of proving whether someone is guilty or not with 100 percent certainty, then I would not only allow the Capital punishment, but I would make it the only punishment. I do not care whether someone steals fifty million dollars or a packet of biscuits, this person is not a good person and the world would only benefit from his absence on it. I agree that this is a brutal way of solving things, but then again… Under such circumstances, how many people would steal?
This article caught my attention from the first point, since i read the article about the execution of Tray Davis . Tray Davis got the death penalty after many years spend in jail. He always tried to prove that he didn’t kill the police man, but there was no evidence of him not doing this crime. This got me thinking about the capital punishments in the United States of America. Whether, the capital punishment is a good or bad thing from the perspective of the majority.
ReplyDeleteMichael Morton which was executed of murdering his wife Christine Morton is now free. After 25 years of life in jail. Morton can now only thank to god, to his lawyers and to people from the “Innocence project“ which took their time to investigate whether Morton is or is not innocent.
However, thinking about the mistakes the justice system is making we come to the conclusion, that it doesn’t matter if you are innocent or not, if there is not enough evidence proving that you are not guilty you have no chance of persuading anyone. Indeed, it could happen to anyone, even to you. To minimalize the problems which are caused by the justice system there should be more projects created which are similar to the “Innocence Project”. The government should invest more money into technology, science research of DNA and other related topics which could lead to an improvement in the investigation of a crime. This would minimize the amount of mistakes the justice system is doing right now.
Anyway, in my opinion, every human has its own right to live. This means that I totally disagree with the capital punishment which includes the death penalty. Every human, even if he committed the worst crime, can’t be in my opinion punished with the death penalty. Life is very precious and nobody has the right to take it from someone and if he does he will be locked down in the prison. Moreover, the fact that innocent people die in prison should be logically enough to convince the government against capital punishment. However, it is not. Nowadays, the government is more worried about how much money it costs to feed and take care of a prisoner that if he is innocent or not. Another problem the government is dealing with right now is in USA, is that there are too many prisoners but not enough of space in the prison.
At the end, beside this entire problem there is another one. What do we do after we figure out the person is innocent? In the case of Michael Morton the main question is; how do you compensate 25 lost years of life? Most of the people would think money because that’s one of the most important things for the human population in this century. Nevertheless, I don’t see any way, how to compensate 25 years of life in jail but I see a way how to make the life of a person sorrow less. The government should make sure that the rest of the life of the incorrectly executed person is stable. That means that the person will have proper health care, no money issues and so on. It’s not a lot but that’s all the government can do.
When I read the first two paragraphs of the article, i was immediately reminded of a book I’d read some 3 years ago. The book was called The Innocence Man and was written by the famous American ex-lawyer and now author John Grisham, who usually wrote fiction books about lawyers, crime, and justice. I've read several books of his but this was his only non-fiction novel that he wrote. It came out in 2007 and told a true story of a man that supposedly raped and murdered a woman in a town near Oklahoma in 1987. He was released, just like the man in the article, thanks to DNA testing 12 years after his imprisonment and living on Death Row where all of the time he was expecting to get punished for something he hadn’t done with death. The thing that struck me was that the case was very, very similar. The man was also put in prison because someone was hiding evidence and in the end got freed after a long court battle by the same people as in the article, the organization called The Innocence Project. I see this alone as proof that such things happen more often than we acknowledge and that even an innocent person in the thought-through justice system like the one in the United States can be condemned to die in prison.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I found the article very disturbing for many reasons. Firstly, this man was arrested at the best age of his life, at 32, and then released as an old man. The evidence against him described in the article was in my opinion foggy, as it is absolutely illogical for a man to murder his wife for not wanting sex at the given time unless the man is mentally deranged, which wasn't stated and therefore probably wasn't the case. I was further disgusted by the next part of the article. The judge represented the justice system that kept the innocent man behind bars for 25 years simply said he “was sorry” but didn’t forget to say how great the system is, and that it’s the best in the world. A man in his position should, in my opinion, show at least a little more regret and willingness to prevent similar things from happening in the future.
One can argue that the man was now getting $80,000 a month for what was done to him, which is by all standards a large sum of money, but on the other hand, is it enough for 25 years lost in a prison? I don't think so. Frankly, the only way I can think of that could make the justice system better is state-of-the-art technology that would provide more evidence and would drastically lower the amount of unjust imprisonments like this one. Technologies such as DNA testing have caused huge leaps for forensic sciences and trials now less than ever have to rely on people’s testimonies and alibi. Doubt is by far the best argument for one that wants to get rid of capital punishment but is not a reason to abolish it completely. It may sound cold-hearted but people who are guilty beyond doubt and have committed hideous crimes in most cases deserve to go to death ward. At the moment this punishment is handed out too freely but that is no reason to remove it completely as it serves as a threat to would-be criminals. I don’t think there is a better way to compensate a person for this sort of injustice than freedom and money, because that is exactly what the prisoner wants once he/she gets out of prison and is no more than what he deserves for having been robbed of large chunk of his life. The overall message of this article is, yet again, that we live in an ugly world and this is one of the aspects that prove it.
@Simon
ReplyDeleteYou start by saying that people steal and that people kill, then give reasons for why it is so. This is true but somewhat irrelevant to the article since the man in question didn’t steal and despite being accused of it, he didn’t kill either. There would be, in my opinion, just as much killing if there wasn’t a tight economic situation and you can see this in poorer parts of the world. The events the article describes also hadn’t happened in Slovakia (where people definitely earn more than €700 monthly on average) and had nothing to do with money. Further, I find your “solutions” on how to stop crime downright ludicrous, more so after you stated that communism was a failure which is also just an opinion. I do however agree that no technology can fully eliminate the uncertainty of whether the person is guilty of not. I also wouldn’t consider a three-year-old child a witness as you did. The logic you are looking for is, in my opinion, quite simple; the court needed to convict someone, the male alleged murderer didn’t have alibi, and whatever decision the judge made would have to be honored so he clearly didn’t put all his attention to the case. Lastly I have to agree with you that that judicial system where such grave mistakes happened can under no circumstances be considered “the best” and the statement is only the result of another overly patriotic US citizen’s ignorance.